Clean drinking water is a necessity of life. Access to clean drinking water, however, can be extremely difficult and sometimes impossible in various settings, situations, and/or circumstances. For example, water found in developing countries may often be dirty, microbe-infested, and unsafe to consume. In another example, military personnel and/or recreationists may run out of water in unfamiliar terrain and may have to rely on water from natural sources, such as streams, ponds, lakes, rivers, which may also be dirty, microbe-infested and unsafe to consume. In a further example, various types of contaminations in water supplies may cause significant shortages of clean drinking water for cities, towns, municipalities, and the like, in a short period of time. In yet another example, natural disasters, such as floods, hurricanes, tsunamis, etc. may render access to clean drinking water extremely difficult immediately after the disaster event. In the above-examples, there is a need for immediate access to and/or consumption of clean drinking water.
One way to meet this need is by way of storing and transporting clean drinking water in vast quantities. After a natural disaster, for instance, large quantities of bottled water are typically shipped to the disaster site. Doing so, however, can be very expensive and time consuming. Moreover, numerous packages of bottled water inherently require large physical spaces for storage in warehouses and transportation in trucks. And in most cases, disaster sites may not receive shipments of bottled water until several days after the disaster event, which contributes to overall devastation. In addition, disposal of bottled water may also pose additional problems, such as pollution in or around the disaster site and harm to the environment.
Another way to meet the need for clean drinking water is by way of purification. Water may be purified in different ways, for example, chemically (e.g., chlorination), physically (e.g., filtration), thermally (e.g., fire, heat), UV light (e.g., sunlight), and flocculation. However, all of these purification techniques have various limitations.
For example, devices that use solar disinfection or boil water are neither easy to ship nor fast to use. Moreover, the addition of chemicals into water via chlorination or flocculation may pose safety issues and/or life threatening risks if improperly used. Moreover, most microfiltration devices are neither cost-effective nor safe according to WHO and EPA guidelines. Most microfiltration devices require vertical head pressure above the filter to create clean water. To create this pressure in a small portable system, most of these devices have storage areas connected to a filter through a long piece of plastic tube. The use of many detachable components in these microfiltration devices render them expensive, bulky, and susceptible to contamination.
In that regard, a fluid purification device and/or method that is cost effective, space-efficient, and safe is needed.